


when the aftershocks fade

by rosemaryandtime



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Episode Tag: s07e3 The Way Forward, Ezor is presumed dead, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gen, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 08:04:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18027914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemaryandtime/pseuds/rosemaryandtime
Summary: “Do you know what this is?” Krolia asks, softening her tone deliberately.Pidge looks up at her, a quick sharp glance through lenses rendered half-opaque by the reflection of the screen in front of her. Krolia keeps still and calm, presenting no threat in the face of the paladin’s spiking defenses--and Pidge draws and releases a harsh breath, looking away.“Yes,” she admits. “I’m dealing.”





	when the aftershocks fade

It’s not that Krolia thinks Acxa will try anything. Keith trusts her, and Krolia trusts Keith’s judgement, but there’s a leap between allowing Acxa to stay and allowing Acxa to stay _unguarded,_ and it’s not one she’s willing to make just yet. She meets Keith’s eyes across the fire, indicates the girl at his side with a brief flick of her eyes, and looks a steady warning back at him. He’s looking back, keen and attentive, and Krolia knows the message has been received.

They set a double watch in three shifts: Krolia and the wolf, Keith and Shiro, Hunk and Allura. Pidge, Lance, and Coran, who bore the brunt of the day's unpleasantness, are left off the schedule to sleep. They arrange it quietly, but Krolia sees Acxa watching and barely keeps her hackles down. Still, the girl doesn't raise a fuss, and their evening meal and campmaking passes without event. It's been a hard day for everybody, and it isn't long before the cave is full of the quiet sounds of peaceful breathing. Krolia prowls a bit, keeping where she can see Acxa’s area of the camp, placing herself or the wolf between the former general and the others at all times.

With her focus split between Acxa and the cave mouth, it takes a little longer than it should for Krolia to realize that one member of their party is not taking their rest. The Green paladin is still awake, hunched over her screens, typing and frowning. Krolia pauses, then makes her way over and around the camp, approaching from such an angle that the paladin will see her coming. Pidge ignores her for as long as she can, but when Krolia crouches down across from her, she looks up reluctantly.

“I know,” she says, unprompted. “I know, I just-- I need to get our maps updated before we take off again. And we don’t have… There’s _no_ messages from the Coalition, in three decaphoebs? That’s not right, something’s gotta be interfering. I need to find a way to boost the Lions’ signal reception to match the--”

Krolia’s not listening. A slight movement of Pidge’s left hand has caught her eye, an erratic tremor. She watches it for a moment, then reaches past Pidge’s screen to lift her hand gently by the wrist.

Pidge’s stream of explanation cuts off abruptly. She’s sitting very still, every muscle tensed and her head lowered, and Krolia realizes with an icy wash of understanding that all of Pidge’s focus is on _not cringing._ Carefully, she releases Pidge’s wrist and sits back, making her movements slow, making her posture unthreatening, making herself as small as she can.

It takes a moment, but the paladin breathes again, deep and deliberate. The frozen stillness breaks, and suddenly she’s fidgeting: fussing with her computer, pushing up her glasses with hands that Krolia can see clearly now are shaking.

“I’m sorry,” Pidge says.

“I take no offense,” answers Krolia.

Pidge nods. She swallows, her eyes darting toward the wolf where he’s taken up his vigil between Acxa’s bedroll and Shiro’s, then back to Krolia, purposefully unflinching. “I do trust you.”

“Yes.”

“You’re Keith’s mom. You’re part of our team. I trust you.”

“I know.”

Pidge nods again, a short decisive motion. Alone of the paladins, she’s still got her armor on, everything but the helmet, and her knees are up to defend the gap over her abdomen.

Krolia watches as Pidge’s fingers fret unconsciously along the edges of one pauldron. “Do you know what this is?” she finally asks, softening her tone deliberately.

Pidge looks up at her, a quick sharp glance through lenses rendered half-opaque by the reflection of the screen in front of her. Krolia keeps still and calm, presenting no threat in the face of the paladin’s spiking defenses--and Pidge draws and releases a harsh breath, looking away.

“Yes,” she admits. “I’m dealing.”

Krolia lets a moment pass, turning her attention toward the rest of the camp. The wolf is sitting alertly, facing the entrance, but she can see nothing in its posture to indicate an approaching threat. “You’ve never been tortured before.”

Pidge lets out a breath through her nose and yanks her laptop closer. “See, you say it like that,” she says, already typing again, “and it makes it sound like ten times worse than it is and it _doesn’t help.”_

“I say it like it is,” says Krolia mildly.

“I wasn’t--” Pidge shuts her eyes for a moment. She licks her lips and draws a breath and says in a rush, “She didn’t _do_ anything to me, she didn’t-- Nothing _happened_ and I’m pretty sure for it to count as torture there has to be, you know, _torturing.”_

Several feet away Hunk snuffles and snorts in his sleep in response to the noise, rolling over onto his side. Pidge’s face goes slack with remorse and apprehension until he settles again.

“Paladin,” Krolia says, and she doesn’t have to try to be gentle in her words and tone. The aftershocks still shuddering through the small human across from her are painfully familiar, and her heart aches to see it in one so young. “Do you know how long I have been with the Blade of Marmora?”

There’s a beat of silence, rebellion. Pidge’s lips press together and for a moment she refuses to look at Krolia, to take the bait. But she doesn’t have it in her to resist a puzzle, and her eyes shift unwillingly to size Krolia up.

“Since before Keith was born,” she says. “And he’s like... twenty. Wait. No. He’s older now.”

“I have been a Blade for twenty-eight decaphoebs,” confirms Krolia. “I have been trained to recognize torture. I have been trained in how to resist it, in how to accept it, and in how to recover from it. And I have been obliged to call on that training more than once.”

Pidge studies her, gone still. Her eyes are large behind her glasses.

Krolia pauses. “I was with you today,” she says. “I was witness to what was done to you, and I have the experience to categorize it. Will you trust me to do so objectively?”

Pidge closes her mouth and averts her eyes. She shrugs.

There's still several feet of space between them, Krolia’s concession to Pidge’s raw edges. Krolia eases a little nearer now, watching to see how this is received, and a little nearer after that, until Pidge's computer is not a wall between them. “You were made to feel helpless,” she says, meeting the paladin’s eyes. “You were made to feel afraid. You were given violence and confusion and mockery and threats, and you were given pain. That’s torture. You were tortured.”

Pidge looks away. She’s breathing deliberately, a slow steady rhythm that Krolia recognizes. Dealing.

“She's probably dead,” she says.

“Yes,” Krolia agrees.

Pidge breathes once, in and out, and when she speaks again her voice is low and hard. “Good.”

Krolia says nothing.

“She hurt my dad,” Pidge says, and there's a little trembling defiance in the words, like she expects to be stopped, to be scolded. “She tried to keep him away from me. She thought it was _funny._ I won't forgive her, I don't care.”

“I would not presume to ask you to,” Krolia says.

Pidge startles slightly, her eyes darting back to Krolia, half-wary. She opens her mouth and pauses. “...That isn't what I thought you'd say.”

“What did you think I would say?”

“That… I should. That it's important for… I don’t know, healing or whatever.”

Krolia considers this. “Would it bring you healing to think more kindly of somebody who took pleasure in your pain?” she asks curiously.

“No,” says Pidge, contemptuous and blunt. “That’s bullshit. Like, what, I’m supposed to find some angle to sympathize with her? Get in her head, figure out what happened to her to make her do things like that? Fuck that, we’ve all had hard lives. She fucking tortured me.”

There it is, thinks Krolia. She watches quietly as the controlled rhythm of Pidge’s breathing slips, as her pupils expand and the barely audible thrum of her pulse picks up. And then Pidge’s eyes are seeking hers in a quick flicker, wide and shaken.

“I’m,” says Pidge, a little unsteadily, and her forehead knits. “Um--”

Krolia reaches out, slowly at first and then with more certainty, and wraps her hands around the paladin’s rerebraces. Pidge’s hands come up immediately to grip at her wrists, her head ducking down.

“I’m okay,” Pidge says, and her voice is tight and even with artificial calm. “Just-- I’m okay, I’m okay--” But her hands are vices on Krolia’s, and she’s shivering in her armor.

“Listen to me,” Krolia says, ducking her head down, trying to catch Pidge’s eye again. “Listen to me, Katie. Everything you are feeling right now is normal. Everything you are feeling is _allowed._ You are allowed to feel it. It’s safe to let yourself feel it. _You are safe.”_

Pidge sucks in a slow breath that shudders and holds it. For a moment Krolia thinks she’s going to keep resisting it, push it all down for later--but then her face contorts, and she crumples forward over her updrawn knees without a sound, and it’s over.

“You’re safe,” Krolia tells her again, and cautiously shifts to sit next to her. “You’re safe.” She lays her hand on Pidge’s back--and humans are a tactile species, she knows this, but two decaphoebs with her son’s hesitant approach to affection have not prepared her for the almost violent desperation with which Pidge lurches to cling to her now. But a cub is a cub, and Krolia finds herself gathering her in, comforting as well as she can, making a silent promise of protection that she doesn't dare speak aloud.

“I have you,” she says instead, and runs a hand over the tawny riot of Pidge’s hair. “I have you. You’re safe.”

It’s not a comfortable position. Pidge is small but solid, and her armor is all hard edges and corners. But Krolia holds her, keeps watch while she cries, silent except for periodic wet, undignified sniffling noises.

She isn’t really surprised when Pidge draws away, rubbing her eyes under her glasses and trying to erase the signs of her tears. Krolia leaves a hand on her back, though she's not sure Pidge can even feel it through the armor, and waits.

“I--” starts Pidge, and takes off her glasses to stare down at the smeared lenses. She sniffs again and rubs at her red nose. “God, I'm-- sorry, that was…” She’s not looking at Krolia.

Krolia watches her, trying to gauge the withdrawal. “There’s no need to apologize.”

“No, I’m just-- I’m sorry for melting down, I just need to like… think about something else for a while and-- process, and--”

“Katie,” says Krolia patiently. “You do not need to apologize--”

 _“How,”_ says Pidge, cutting her off, her voice breaking, “do you know that name, how could you _possibly_ know that name?”

Krolia draws back slightly, uncertain, a memory of a memory playing behind her eyes: Keith, his head bandaged, sitting up in a bed in a room filled with the golden light of a sun she hasn’t seen for more than twenty decaphoebs; Pidge at the door, dragging by the hand a tall human woman with the same tawny hair, with laughter in her amber eyes--

_“Katie, wait, you can’t just go barging in--”_

_“He’s awake, he’s sorta dressed, he doesn’t care. Come on, I want you to meet Krolia…”_

“It’s what your mother calls you, isn’t it?” she asks, rather than trying to explain.

Pidge stares at her, and abruptly her eyes are welling again. She lowers her head to try to hide it and sniffs once, hard. “She gave me that name,” she says, and her voice is almost steady. “I picked Katherine when I came out and it sort of-- she made it Katie.”

There are layers here for which Krolia has no context, but she listens to the raw, exhausted longing in Pidge’s voice and understands. “I apologize,” she says softly. “I will not use that name again.”

Pidge shifts. She gives Krolia a long tired look with red eyes, and sighs. “No,” she says. “I think-- I don't mind. You can… you can call me that if you want.”

Krolia stills, the weight of the gift settling on her. “I'm honored.”

The paladin lifts her shoulders and looks away, fidgeting with the edge of her vambrace. “Anyway, I’m… fine. You don’t have to, like...”

“You should sleep.”

“I don’t--” Pidge rubs her eyes. “I’m too keyed up, I just-- I’d rather keep working.” She looks up at Krolia, a little wary, a little pleading, and Krolia realizes all at once that she’s looking for permission, limits, guidance.

She’s struck all over again by how young the youngest paladin is.

“My watch is up in a little over a varga,” she says finally. “You can keep working until then. After that you need to at least try to sleep.”

Pidge considers this for a moment, then concedes with a little nod. “I can finish the program to update the map of our immediate vicinity by then,” she says, and slides her glasses back onto her face. “I’ll let it run overnight.”

Krolia waits for a moment, until Pidge is typing and absorbed again, then gets to her feet and withdraws to return to her watch.

“Hey--”

She turns back.

A hesitation follows, full of the shape of something Pidge hasn’t figured out how to say. “I’d,” she begins, and bites her lip, staring down at her hands. “You said-- your training. With the Blade. Can you tell me about it sometime.”

Krolia shifts. “What would you like to know?”

“You said they taught you about... recovery,” Pidge says, and breathes in and out before she looks up at Krolia, hard-eyed and determined. “And-- I think I could use some help.”

Krolia nods slowly. “Tomorrow,” she says. “I’ll come ride with you in your Lion, and we’ll talk.”

“Okay,” says Pidge, and nods a couple times. “Okay. That’s. Thank you.”

Krolia inclines her head. When the clatter of Pidge’s keyboard finally starts up again, she turns away.

 

Keith wakes for his watch a varga later. He’s taken stock of the campsite before Krolia has noticed he’s awake, his eyes settling on Pidge with a frown. When Krolia comes to join him, he looks a question at her.

“It’s alright,” Krolia tells him quietly. “She’ll be alright.”

She means it.


End file.
